Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The shadow is just stiff enough — you don’t have to scrape-scrape-scrape to get product off, but it doesn’t crumble everywhere, either.

I’m sorry, have you seen how cute this is?

One duo is $6, which is just… whoa. I mean, when’s the last time you bought a baked shadow

It wasn’t tested on animals, hurrah!

Why we don’t:

The pigmentation leaves a little something to be desired — I mean, the shades are great, but they’re a little hard to build up. It’s not too bad, though, and for a drugstore product (that’s actually at a drugstore price,) the amount of colour you can foil on is definitely still decent..

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The shades: Rebel features two cream shades, to be used as liner or shadow. One is a bright blue; the other is simply glitter suspended in a clear base. The blue side is a fairly dry cream with just a touch of fine shimmer, and while I do thin kit’s lovely, bright, and fun, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the colour — it’s just not really my thing. The “white” side, on the other hand, has a tendency to sweat, posesses a texture reminiscent of Vaseline, and is more than a little bit hard to work with. I have to go over the same patch of skin three or four times to get the right glitter dispersal!

indirect sunlight / flash. click to enlarge!

glitter on the lower lashline; blue shade winged on the top. nothing else, aside from concealer.

The ingredients:

The wear: Okay, so it smudges, just as promised — but the problem is it just keeps smudging! I do like a creme that smudges, but it should set after a few minutes. Hot Smudge? Not so much. I flicked some of the blue on, gave it five minutes, cleaned up the line with oil-free makeup remover, gave it another ten minutes, and… yep, it was already creeping along.

(I did try it with primer underneath and powder overtop as well, with the same results.)

The verdict? I just… didn’t like this product. I don’t have to say that often, thank goodness, but I simply did not like this one! It didn’t wear well on my lids, the packaging felt flimsy, and I could have sworn the blue side was more creamy and less dry when I first opened this a few weeks ago. The only thing it does have going for itself is its vivid hue, but even that fades quickly!

Don’t let this put you off the whole Hard Candy line, though. Sure, I kind of hated this wasn’t a fan of this one, but I still adore Honeymoon ;)

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

What it is:Hard Candy‘s Blush Crush, in Honeymoon. (It also comes in Bombshell, a medium-deep bronze, Pin Up, a luminizer, and Living Doll, a great bright pink.)

Everything you need to know: It is great and you need it.

No, seriously, that’s all you need to know. Stop making that face at me!

Alright, fine…

The shade: Honeymoon is a gorgeous light peach with violet veining. The veining doesn’t much affect the shade, but it does look divine in the pan! She’s not unusually pigmented or unusually sheer as far as baked blushers go: you won’t get NARS-esque pigment out of her, but you can definitely use– wait, why has this blusher suddenly become female?

Anyhow, you can certainly use this on its own. For a pale-skinned gal like myself, it’s perfect for a light, fresh, peachy cheek colour. For someone medium toned, it would look amazing for some sheer, subtle luminosity. And for someone much darker, it would make a gorgeous hilight!

different lighting. the one on the right is closer to reality, though.

you know, seeing as I’m not blue.

The product: This Blush Crush wears through the entire day, for me — I need a bit of a refresher for the evening, but once this is buffed in at seven o’clock after breakfast, I’m fine until five for dinner! What really takes the cake is the incredibly fine shimmer particles. Not only do they make Honeymoon breathtaking in the pan, they create that much-lusted-after “glow” that everyone so loves. “Which means what, exactly?” you ask? Well: it means that you won’t look like a greasy disco ball, which is not in the least bit attractive.

Not even from the point of view of a disco ball.

The verdict? I know these are hard to come across outside of the US, so: my dear American girls, if you haven’t tried a Blush Crush — try one STAT! And for the rest of you? I say we plan a trip to the US together so we can stock up on these, because Honeymoon is sixteen levels of completely awesome.

To put this into perspective, I haven’t ever found a blusher with this much luminosity and/or peachiness that I’ve loved the way I love Honeymoon. She’s incredible!

(And no, they’re not paying me to say that.)

(They’re also not paying me not to say that, though, which is good. Because then I’d say it anyways and they’d be angry. And they might take her away! Oh my god, please don’t take her away!)

Monday, June 28, 2010

Last Monday, I put up a few photos of ScarJo’s Tony Awards look, a gorgeous violet eye with matte pink cheeks and natural, slightly-pink lips. A couple of you expressed as much enthusiasm about the look as I was feeling, so I duped it.

Or, at least, I tried to. See, it didn’t go so well — I got distracted partway through and it ended up a lot (a lot) darker. I figured we’d leave it at that and more on.

Then Hard Candy’s Daydream came in the mail. Perfection. I knew what I had to do!

For a how-to, a product list, and many more images…

How-to:

EyesStart by priming the eye area. Then, using a flat shader brush, cover the lid surface with a sheer pink-violet. Using the same brush and shadow, foil the colour onto the middle of the lid for intensity. To add depth to the eye, use a fluffy brush to buff a dark blue-violet into your outer V, adding just a bit at a time and adding more if needed.

Then, take a shimmery true violet and blend the two together, adding this colour also to the lower lashline with a flatter eye brush. Clean off this same brush well, then use it to add more of the pink-violet to the inner corner (both on the lid and on the lower lashline.) Add shimmery, silver glitter to the inner V, line with a dark, shimmery violet, and apply mascara.Lips & cheeksContour the cheeks with a medium toned matte pink and top with (a) a luminizer on the very top of the cheekbones, or (b) a sheer, luminizing blusher on the top half of the cheekbones. For the lips, use a creamy, shimmer-free “natural” lip colour, with a bit of pink to it if possible.

Eyes:

The only thing not cooperating for this look? The sun! It was full sun or no sun… I chose no sun for some of the shots, and the results were blurry. (I’m okay with that, though, because full sun would have just produces wierd tones and grossness anyways.)